Invisible Art, Invisible Brains

If this turns out to be a hoax, I apologize.

What are these people looking at?

A 27-year-old New York artist has invented something called "invisible art" and she is making millions selling it to people who absolutely must have it. 

A documentary team from the Canadian Broadcasting radio network traveled to Lana Newstrom's empty studio to learn more about her art that isn't there. 
"Just because you can't see anything, doesn't mean I didn't put hours of work into creating a particular piece," Newstrom told the CBC.  "Art is about imagination and that is what my work demands of the people interacting with it. You have to imagine a painting or sculpture is in front of you." 
The most amusing aspect of the story is the image of snobby art collectors walking through an empty studio studiously staring at blank walls with track lighting properly illuminating the nothingness on display. Some of the art afficianados actually stop and soak in the lack of art that is not hanging on the blank wall and tilt their heads in a deeply thoughtful way as if to project their profound understanding of the message sent by the brilliant young artist and her stunning ability to not create anything.  
Newstrom's agent, who is undoubtedly raking in a nice commission by his client's ability to not do anything, says, "When she describes what you can't see, you begin to realize why one of her invisible works can fetch upwards of a million dollars."
This story was not, we repeat, not published in The Onion. 

I wish I had the funds to hire a polling firm to be there every hour the gallery is open, and be able to demand that every person who walks through the door submit to the questionnaire that I get to design.  There will be a string of non-threatening, innocuous questions.  Then there will be these questions:

(#) Would you support tax-payer funding for this art through the NEA?

(#) Of all the pieces you have viewed here today, which one had the most impact on you, and why? Please be very specific.

(#) What policital party or philosophy of government would you describe yourself as being most aligned with?  Again, be very specific.

Worse Than Stupid

Yep.  They think you are worse than stupid.  If you come from flyover country, the parts of the United States that lie between the metropolitan areas of the east and west coasts, the leftist elites think you are some kind of evolutionary throwback.  You are not just ignorant, you don't even have the intellectual capacity to learn to become as sophisticated as they are.

Just go to this site and play the video.  It's barely 3 minutes.

What makes this even worse is that Chris Christie is not really even a conservative.  Christie is actually a liberal who sought a job in power and when he got there, he got mugged by the hard, cold reality that New Jersey is in a financial mess and he had enough intelligence to know that, as he responded to a union goon teacher, the State of New Jersey, unlike the Federal government, can't print money.  Bill Maher and company are the true believers in State control of everything except personally perverse lifestyles.

We've Got To Stop Rudolf McGillicuddy

Who is Rudolf McGillicuddy you ask?  I'm not sure.

But let's say that he might be running for president of the United States in the near future.

A lot of people don't like him for some reason or other.  He's got no real chance of winning.  He demonstrates that he has a firm grasp of the issues and is a fast learner, but he talks with an irritating nasally kind of voice.

He has no gravitas or real relevance in the world of politics.  So, there's just no way in hell he could get elected as president.

He has no real skeletons in his closet.  He basically speaks his mind and speaks the truth, and seems to share a lot of the same values as people who live in fly-over country.  It would be stupid for his party to back him to run for president of the United States because he would surely lose to Barak Obama.

Therefore, I am calling on all of you people out there to help investigate this guy.  Help read all of his emails for the last five years.  Go through his garbage.  Yes, I mean literally.  Camp outside his house and collect the bags and look through them and see if he's got any incriminating evidence that might show that he's not qualified to run for president.

Once we accomplish this, we need to then move to expose the Easter Bunny for being the fraud that he is.  We need to make sure that voters are aware that the Easter Bunny does not actually lay colored eggs and hide them for children to find.

We at the ComPost Files are not sure whether or not the Easter Bunny is considering a run for the presidency of the United States, but we feel that it's best we not take any chances.

I'm Almost Speechless

What happens when classical education, reason, and logic are no longer required subjects in school and the leftist moonbats are in charge of government education?

You get this:

More on Moderate Danger

Remember when I wrote "Moderate Danger?"  I was making the point that those who choose to believe themselves moderates or centrists are not good for anybody, and are, in fact, the very enablers who make it possible for us to accelerate toward hell.  They are terribly smug in their self-righteous opinion that they are "reasonable" in their approach because they stay away from anything that might be viewed as extreme by any of the other sides.  They think themselves thoughtful, when what they are really doing is avoiding any real thought whatsoever.

I then ran across this wonderful paragraph today over at One Cosmos:

One thinks of the impressionable and emptyheaded "independent voters" who decide our elections and usher in a nightmarish future that none of them intended. But because of their spiritual and intellectual passivity, they open the way for political actors with very bad intentions indeed. For Dante, these are souls Who mourn the lack of intellect's true light.

This guy is a wealth of great insight and clever prose.

Best Statement #1 for 2011

Via the comment section from House of Eratosthenes:

“The Left is more than ruthless, they are evil. They seek to rule, not by persuasion or honest debate, but by any means necessary. They revel in slander, character assassination and violence. They are steeped in hatred for all who oppose them. They seek to create and hold a monopoly on news media and editorial opinion; they support voter fraud and stolen elections; they prosecute political opponents on trumped-up charges in kangaroo courts. They have raised “the politics of personal destruction” to a high art form. Fairness, civility and common decency are unknown to them. I do not see the American Left as fellow citizens, I see them as sworn enemies for whom I feel little or no commonality or fraternity.

The Left has, however, finally convinced me of the truth of one of their key precepts: Politics is war by other means. They proved that in their orgy of hate and slander following the Arizona shootings. I shall not forget again.”

I’m fresh out of mercy."

That's right.

Quote of the Day: Nicki

Americans' assessment of Congress has hit a new low, with 13% saying they approve of the way Congress is handling its job. The 83% disapproval rating is also the worst Gallup has measured in more than 30 years of tracking congressional job performance.

What I'd really like to know is: who are the cave-dwelling, ignorant, drooling, imbecilic, cretinous Neanderthal moonbats who constitute the 13 percent?

You have to be living under a rock and completely oblivious to the events of the past two years to still believe that Congress is doing a good job.

My only disagreement with Nicki is that she is being unfair to Neanderthals.  Not that such polls are anything more than something for me to laugh at, but I've often wondered where in the heck one could find one of these 13 percent people.  Do they all live in Nancy Pelosi's district?  Do they wish we were living under Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, or were back in Joseph Stalin's USSR?

In case you'd like to browse her site: The Liberty Zone.

Fighting Revisionist History

I have spent about 24 hours fighting the urge to fisk this one little section of the very long screed by Mark Ames. I mentioned it in this post earlier.  It had me going around the web and looking up information I already knew, but needed to check references on.


Let me just get on with it.  Mr. Ames' words are highlighted.  

"Ever read the preamble to the Constitution? There’s nothing about private property there and self-interest."

For those of us who actually know the history of the United States and actually read the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers; you read a statement like that and your mouth drops open. It's like the reaction you have to followers of Louis Farrakhan who believe in that mother-ship stuff, or that the Apollo moon landings were faked.  The statement is so ridiculously wrong.  It almost seems silly to point out why it is so wrong, but then I realized; if Mark Ames is this clueless, there's a good chance that others are as well.  I was watching Glenn Beck the other night and he pointed out that one in four Americans don't know who we won our independence from, so how could they know why?  So, in the off chance that one of them comes to this blog, I want them to be exposed to the truth.


The events leading up to the Revolutionary War, the war for independence from Great Britain, was all about liberty, and if there was one thing that the founders of the United States saw as a fundamental right, it was private property.  Don't believe me?  That's okay, they spoke for themselves.

"Among the natural rights  of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can."  -- Samuel Adams

"The constitutions of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press."

 -- Thomas Jefferson

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."  --  John Adams

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."

-- James Madison, National Gazette essay, March 27, 1792

There are many more quotes, but that should suffice.  Even if I didn't have those, one of the most well known slogans of the Revolution was "No taxation without representation!"  What are taxes?  Taxes are a way to take some of the fruits of one's labor, their property.  If a person doesn't understand that simple concept, they'd better hope that someone else is going to be available to bring a tray of food on occasion and change their diaper regularly.


Then there's the issue of self-interest.  It would have been amazing enough had Ames only mentioned property, but to then assert that the Preamble was written without regard to or that it wasn't about individual self-interest is mind-boggling.  How much dope does one have to smoke to come up with that conclusion?  If the founders weren't concerned with self-interest, then what was it?  Ames is really begging the question.  What is the opposite of self-interest?  The collective?  All this talk about freedom and liberty is so we can then create a government powerful enough to enforce neighborhood covenants and deed restrictions?  Make sure that nobody earns too much money or eats what they want?   Are there some secret writings of the founders that we don't know about?  Is there a secret decoder ring or enigma box that tells us what the founders really meant?


The entire contents of the Declaration of Independence is about the freedom of the people as individuals to pursue their own interests without interference from government. In essence, freedom is about being left alone.  Freedom to associate or -- and this is important -- NOT associate with anybody you choose.  Liberty is about not having to worry that someone is going to demand part of your life, embodied in the fruits of your labor, for the benefit of others, regardless of your consent.


What taxes needed to be collected, were for very restricted and well defined purposes.  
 In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, 

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." 

-- James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

This was said by James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution because of his leading effort in writing the document.  He was also the 4th President.  Notice he is saying that such a right was not granted to Congress.  Yet we live in this upside down world today, where when someone asks the former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, where they [Congress] think it is in the Constitution that they have the authority to pass the totalitarian medical care bill known as "Obamacare,"  the best she can come up with is: "Are you kidding?" 

Mark Ames continues:

This country, by contract, was founded in order to strive for a “more Perfect Union”—that’s “union,” as in the pairing of the words “perfect” and “union”—not sovereign, not states, not local, not selfish, but “union.”

What would Thomas Jefferson say about that?  Here you go:

“The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government.”

That is a complete, in-your-face refutation of Mr. Ames' assumption or assertion.  There may have been some arguments among the founders early on about some details, but the States would never have ratified the Constitution had it been common knowledge that the purpose of the contract was to make them subject to a powerful centralized government that would forge them and hammer them into someone's utopian idea of a "perfect union" as seen through the eyes of a socialist.  It took three years of publicly pleading with the States via the Federalist Papers to get them to ratify the Constitution by 1789.

Now here is where Mark Ames really proves himself to be either totally ignorant about U.S. history, or he is a liar:

And that other purpose at the end of the Constitution’s contractual obligations: promote the “General Welfare.” That means “welfare.” Not “everyone for himself” but “General Welfare.” That’s what it is to be American: to strive to form the most perfect union with each other, and to promote everyone’s general betterment. That’s it.

"Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. "

-- Thomas Jefferson letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817 

 "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one...."

-- James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 

 "With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted."  

-- James Madison in a letter to James Robertson

It really doesn't take a lot of effort to go and read the words of the founders and understand the plain meaning of what they said.  In fact, they made it a point to be well understood by the populace precisely because they were counting on the populace to agree to the system of governance that they had created.  How important was this concept of making the law clear and simple?  Let's hear from James Madison:

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow."

-- James Madison, Federalist no. 62, February 27, 1788

That tells me that if Mr. Madison were here today, he would be leading the march on Washington to burn the entire contents of the U.S. Code and dissolving every cabinet post and bureau save but maybe three or four.  It is with the utmost confidence from studying the words of the founders, that I can say that their concept of freedom was to only tolerate the most minimum of government.  The highest aim of this experiment in self-rule was for all men to be left alone to live  their lives as they saw fit, as long as they didn't encroach upon the rights and freedom of others.


So, now that we can see the truth in the words of the very men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, what should we do about it?  Let me use Mark Ames own words:

Now, our problem is that there are a lot of people in this country who have dedicated their entire lives to subverting the stated purpose of this country. We must be prepared to identify those who disrupt and sabotage our national purpose of creating this “more perfect union” identifying those who sabotage our national goal of “promoting the General Welfare”—and calling them by their name: traitors.

Mark Ames, if you are merely ignorant, and willing to admit it, then let us forgive you and help you to rectify your delusions.  If you insist on holding to your beliefs which are destructive and counter to all that the founders said and wrote, then you have made yourself to be a most loathsome creature in the eyes of those who yearn for freedom.  You have made yourself a lover and friend to the state and champion of the statist, and as such, you have made yourself an enemy of any people who wish to remain free.


Those of us who understand real liberty do not wish to impose anything upon you other than for you to leave us the hell alone.  If you can attract enough people to engage in your ideals of how a society should function, go and get it done. Take California or New York. They are almost completely there already.  I'm sure it won't matter to you if I tell you that it's been tried over and over and over, in places like the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. etc. etc.  The definition of insanity has never been a deterrent to those who believe in your cause.  As history shows, every time the schemes of creating a socialist utopian dream fails, the response of you and people like you is always to double down.  As Kevin Baker has elaborated:  "Do it again, only HARDER!"


Do what you have to do, Mr. Ames.  Just don't expect those of us with a sincere and lucid understanding of what this country was founded to be, to just roll over and let you do it.  Molan Labe.

How Do You Satirize This?

When logic and reason and the ability to think rationally becomes demonized by the left, it gets replaced by sheer idiocy.  Like the idea that inanimate objects have feelings or cognitive thought.

The Apostle Paul wrote about this in in the first chapter of his letter to the church in Rome, all the way back in the first century C.E.  When people reject the Creator and reason, they can begin to believe all kinds of weird and bizarre things.

Again, I borrow from my good friend Peter, this bit of moonbattery.  There was a time, maybe a few decades ago, that had you described such stuff, most people would say you were just being silly or crazy.  That nobody could possibly be that nutty outside of an insane asylum.